Why doesn’t the club adjust the wage budget

I don't know if it's the same or not.
In Thailand we have a football team. Divided into zones according to provinces.
If that football team Located in the province or near a large province, it is often easy to find football fans.
Like in Thailand not to mention Bangkok.
If it's a city like Chiang Mai, Songkhla, Nakhon Ratchasima, Chonburi, Buriram, there will be a lot of football fans.
But if it is a second city ,there are few football fans. Because besides the per capita income being low some football fans also choose to support big teams from nearby cities.
So it's difficult, that teams from these cities will be successful.
Some teams in the northeastern provinces of Thailand choose not to collect ticket fees. But would like more football fans to come eat and buy team shirts.
But that's it. The team must revolve around the lower leagues.
 
Hammies_Tash said:
I heard Keiron McGuire about research he’d done on the 21/22 season of PL teams, the profits each team made on an individual supporter coming to a game. He worked out that Spurs were making £71 profit per supporter per game, they were top by a mile, bottom was Watford at £16 per supporter. Spurs were so far ahead because of the time supporters spent at the stadium, on average they arrived 1hr 10 mins before kick off and 45 mins after. Encouraged by good quality reasonably priced food & drink.
Be interesting to see what Boro’s numbers are, I’d be surprised if they made double figures.
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Tottenham have the beer machines that fill about 12 pints at a time from the bottom. We trialed the machines then sent them back because they where too expensive to buy.
 
North22 said:
Tottenham have the beer machines that fill about 12 pints at a time from the bottom. We trialed the machines then sent them back because they where too expensive to buy.
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That is literally a sunk beer fallacy.

Buy the machine. If everyone at half time has 2 pints instead of 1, because the queues aren’t 12 minutes long, the beer machine has paid for itself within 2 years.

I’ve said this many times before but there should never be a queue at a sport stadium for anything. Demand is highly predictable, you know exactly how many tickets have been sold and know to the minute when the customers will be coming to the bar or the food outlet, you study the data for a bit to figure out what they buy then get it ready in advance. You shouldn’t queue for longer than it takes to tap a payment - and in a lot of stadiums worldwide, you don’t.
 
If I were Boro food and drinks manager I would go to Preston, Leicester and a few others to learn how to improve revenue. Cardiff another good example.

They all have better quality options than us and Leicester and Cardiff both manage to make it really easy to get served. Cardiff even have a proper managed queue so it's not a free for all. Fancy that.

With some imagination and a bit of research Boro could do so much better. The options at the Riverside are the same if not worse than when it opened.

Couple of notable examples/exceptions:

The former noodle/pizza stall in GRFZ - why did they drop that? Was a great option for the kids and took people away from the bars. It's still there, just not used

Chips and curry sauce - more ideas like this needed. A proper modern favourite.

Why no cheese and onion pasty any more or the pizza they used to do? Other than chips, are there any non meat options?

At half time when they open the gates for smokers, do what other clubs do and have food stalls outside. Get some of the burger vans located there, I bet they'd pay a premium for being able to sell during the match rather than just before and after. Other clubs do this, even Stoke dare I mention them.

The club shop really has gone down the hill. I'm sure they have less waste so profit is up, but it's like walking into a closing down sale. I live a bit of Boro merch but there's no new stock and what there is looks a lot worse than what I can get from the t- shirt shop from Boro online (why don't they partner with them) or from Toffs for old replica kits.

I'm not a commercial manager but I can see where Boro are missing out with some pretty simple ideas.

Also, could some of these fan sessions be on Teams - if you don't live on Teesside it's not really viable to get there for an after work meeting. Could the club shop one not have been on the morning of a Saturday match for example?
 
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why are
jonny_greenings_sock said:
That is literally a sunk beer fallacy.

Buy the machine. If everyone at half time has 2 pints instead of 1, because the queues aren’t 12 minutes long, the beer machine has paid for itself within 2 years.

I’ve said this many times before but there should never be a queue at a sport stadium for anything. Demand is highly predictable, you know exactly how many tickets have been sold and know to the minute when the customers will be coming to the bar or the food outlet, you study the data for a bit to figure out what they buy then get it ready in advance. You shouldn’t queue for longer than it takes to tap a payment - and in a lot of stadiums worldwide, you don’t.
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if we are the most expensive in the championship, we should have a match day experience that matches that
 
uncle_rico said:
How do Huddersfield do it? £249 is the price of their season tickets. That’s more than 50% cheaper than our cheapest adult ticket.

West Brom charge £25 for a kids to season ticket and they can sit anywhere in the ground. Non GRFZ kids tickets are c. £200!

They are two examples who will have similar costs to us.
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How similar is Huddersfield’s? Are you just assuming it’s similar? If we’re talking about the ground running costs, then they don’t own it and aren’t the only tenant. Which must radically change both their cost base and their ability to make profits from secondary use.
 
Quicksilvera said:
What would you like to see to improve your experience? Maybe we could get some Eastern European acrobats to perform at half time and fire ex boro players out of a cannon.
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Missed the point, if you read the post I replied to you should be able to join the dots, it’s not that hard to follow
 
edinboro said:
If I were Boro food and drinks manager I would go to Preston, Leicester and a few others to learn how to improve revenue. Cardiff another good example.

They all have better quality options than us and Leicester and Cardiff both manage to make it really easy to get served. Cardiff even have a proper managed queue so it's not a free for all. Fancy that.

With some imagination and a bit of research Boro could do so much better. The options at the Riverside are the same if not worse than when it opened.

Couple of notable examples/exceptions:

The former noodle/pizza stall in GRFZ - why did they drop that? Was a great option for the kids and took people away from the bars. It's still there, just not used

Chips and curry sauce - more ideas like this needed. A proper modern favourite.

Why no cheese and onion pasty any more or the pizza they used to do? Other than chips, are there any non meat options?

At half time when they open the gates for smokers, do what other clubs do and have food stalls outside. Get some of the burger vans located there, I bet they'd pay a premium for being able to sell during the match rather than just before and after. Other clubs do this, even Stoke dare I mention them.

The club shop really has gone down the hill. I'm sure they have less waste so profit is up, but it's like walking into a closing down sale. I live a bit of Boro merch but there's no new stock and what there is looks a lot worse than what I can get from the t- shirt shop from Boro online (why don't they partner with them) or from Toffs for old replica kits.

I'm not a commercial manager but I can see where Boro are missing out with some pretty simple ideas.

Also, could some of these fan sessions be on Teams - if you don't live on Teesside it's not really viable to get there for an after work meeting. Could the club shop one not have been on the morning of a Saturday match for example?
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You will get a chance to question the commercial and retail managers next week - I will set up a thread later in the week for people to pose their questions.
 
AytonMews said:
I would think it’s quite a small proportion of fans who want to sink 2 pints in 15 mins at half time… queue or no queue
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That may true, but you might queue up for a drink. Finally, you get it, then your child suddenly decides they want a drink and you have to spend the rest of the time queued up. It's a pathetic system that is badly run, anyone looking at it to improve the service/profit would identify that as a huge problem area right away, but it's been like that for what 15 years? maybe even longer. Dinosaurs.
 
Huddersfield did sell alot of players in 2022 and have been in relegation battles since. I think they have more limited concessions while we have signifcant concessions for 18-21s and over 65s.

WBA had parachute money in 2021/2 and 2022/3 and the current season.
 
fmttmadmin said:
We need £14.50 per head net of VAT just to pay our stadium running costs - we presently get in £12.37 from the average match ticket. Stadium running costs excluding repairs and maintenance are around £8.25 m per annum -
includes heat, electricity, water, stewards, police, security (for cash), emergency, ticket office, admin, cleaners, safety certificate etc etc.
We paid £1.5 m in summer on stadium refurb like the new PA, replacing all the turnstiles (the mechanics behind the scenes).
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Oh Yes - A lot of fans on here wanted digital ticket scanning of their phones which would have been part of the £1.5m. This may have put £10 cost onto every season ticket (£220k). I guess its an investment for the next 5 years, but fans have ot realise this conveniece for them costs every ST holder money.

Just a comment but doesn't Hull City pay £1.6m annually to rent their stadium if it costs us £1.5m a year just to refurbish ours, we are on the wrong model.
 
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fmttmadmin said:
You will get a chance to question the commercial and retail managers next week - I will set up a thread later in the week for people to pose their questions.
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Cheers Rob. I’d be interested in that, is there a remote option for the Q&A?

@edinboro I think you’re absolutely spot on. There seems to be a lack of imagination and research. If other clubs do it better then there’s no reason why we can’t do the same other than lack of will or imagination.

They also don’t step back and take a fresh look at the very obvious problem areas which put people off getting to the ground early and spending money in it - ie queues. Some of it might be tied into contracts with food & beverage operators which is fair enough.

I’m not a commercial manager either, but I think if you make it quick, convenient and enjoyable for people to buy stuff, they’ll buy more. So sort that out first.

Then, make it fun and offer some different stuff. A ‘local heroes’ menu would be fun, partner with 5 of the most popular restaurants in town and get them to do a little food truck-type popup in the concourses. Manjaros chicken, Dimi’s street Greek, Barbs pizza slices, pick any quality chippy and get them to do one. Even if you sell none, you’re offering something different and a bit more exciting than the pubs you’re competing with for pre and post-match trade and taking the pressure off the main bars.

If people go there early to buy some cool food then they’ll probably buy a pint to go with it (if they’re not queuing for 12 minutes to get one).
 
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